The methods for producing various types of alcohol from grain generally follow similar procedures, depending on whether the process is operated wet or dry. One alcohol of great interest today is ethanol. Ethanol can be produced from virtually any type of grain, but is most often made from corn.
Since its inception, the national market for fuel ethanol has grown from about 6.6 million liters (about 175 million gallons (gal)) in 1980 to about 7.9 billion liters (about 2.1 billion gal) in 2002. In 2003, the U.S. ethanol industry produced a record 10.6 billion liters (about 2.8 billion gal), all of which was produced from 74 ethanol plants located mainly within the corn-belt. Recent federal government legislation has been proposed, which would mandate that ethanol production capacity grow to approximately 1.9 trillion liters (approximately five (5) billion gal) by 2012. Consequently, ethanol producers are seeking methods to improve yields before incurring the high capital costs of direct plant expansion. Because of the ongoing need for ethanol, as well as recent and expected future rapid growth of the ethanol industry, producers are finding it difficult to incur the time and expense required to refine existing technologies to meet the potentially mandated increases and also remain cost competitive with intense ethanol producer competition. Higher yields are also desired for other types of alcohol.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a significant need in the art for improvements to alcohol production, such as ethanol production, which increase yields in a cost-effective manner.